Around on the other side of the canopy, Nick Williams was sitting by himself in another deck chair. He was reading Madame Bovary and trying without success to ignore both his residual hangover and the scattered tidbits of conversation he was overhearing. He had programmed the navigation system to return automatically to the dive site from Thursday, so there was nothing else he really needed to do to pilot the boat. Nick almost certainly would have enjoyed sharing the conversation with Carol and Troy, but after his earlier confrontation with her, in which he felt she had made it clear that she didn’t want to associate with him, he was not about to join them. It was now necessary that he ignore her. Otherwise she would conclude that he was just another wimp.
And besides, he liked his book. He was reading the part where Emma Bovary gives herself over completely to the affair with Rudolph Boulanger. Nick could see Emma sneaking away from her house in the small French provincial village and racing across the fields into the arms of her lover. Most of the time in the past, whenever Nick had read a novel about a beautiful, dark heroine, he had pictured Monique. But interestingly enough, the Emma Bovary that he was envisioning while he was reading on the boat was Carol Dawson. And more than once that morning, when Nick had read Flaubert’s descriptions of the passions of Emma and Rudolph, he had imagined himself in the role of the bachelor from the French landed gentry making love to Emma/Carol.
The automatic navigation system that guided the boat while Nick was reading consisted of a simple transmitter/receiver combination and a small miniprocessor. Taking advantage of a worldwide set of synchronous satellites, software in the processor established the boat’s location very precisely and then followed a preprogrammed steering algorithm to the desired final site. Along the way, the two-way link with the satellite overhead provided the necessary information to up date the path through the ocean.
When the Florida Queen was within a mile of the dive site, the nav system sounded a tone. Nick then went to the controls and changed to manual guidance. Carol and Troy rose from their chairs. “Remember,” she said, “the primary purpose of our dive is to photograph and salvage whatever it was that we saw down in that fissure on Thursday. If we have enough time afterward, we will go back to the overhang where we found the trident.”
Carol walked over and switched on the monitor attached to the ocean telescope. She was standing only a few feet away from Nick. They had not exchanged any words since right after the boat left Key West. “Good luck,” he said quietly.
She looked at him to see whether he was serious or was being sarcastic. She couldn’t tell. “Thank you,” she said evenly.
Troy joined Carol at the monitor. She pulled the photographs out of the envelope so they could be used to define the exact spot to anchor. For a couple of minutes she issued instructions to Nick, based on what she was seeing from the telescope, commanding small corrections to the boat’s position. At last the ocean floor underneath them looked almost exactly as it had on Thursday when they had seen the whales. With one major difference.
“Now where’s that hole in the reef?” Troy said innocently. “I don’t seem to be able to find it on the monitor.”
Carol’s heart was speeding as she glanced back and forth from the telescope screen to the photographs. Where is that fissure? she thought, It can’t have disappeared. The boat drifted away from the dive site and Nick steered it back. This time Troy dropped the anchor overboard. But Carol still could not see any sign of the fissure. She could not understand it.
“Nick,” she said finally, “could you give us a hand? We were down there together and we both saw the hole. Are Troy and I just confused in some way?”
Nick came over from the steering wheel under the canopy and stared into the monitor. He too was puzzled. But he thought he saw other things on the bottom of the ocean that also looked a little different. “I don’t see the hole either,” he said, “but maybe it’s just the lighting. We were here in the afternoon last time and now it’s ten in the morning.”
Troy turned to Carol. “Maybe Nick ought to dive with you. He was there before, has seen the fissure, and knows how to find the overhang. Everything I know is from the pictures.”
“No,” said Carol quickly. “I want to dive with you. Nick’s probably right. We just can’t see the fissure because of the different lighting.” She picked up her underwater camera and walked around the canopy toward the back of the boat. “Let’s get going,” she said. “We’ll do just fine.”
Troy gave Nick a silent shrug, as if to say “I tried,” and followed her a few moments later.
3
“BUT Richard,” Ramirez said, “we could get into big trouble.”
“I don’t see how,” Lieutenant Todd replied. “Or why anybody ever has to know. The Navy built the system, after all, primarily for its own ships. We just allow everyone else to use it. All we have to do is interrogate the master register and get the Doppler and ranging time history for their particular identification code. Then we can figure out where they are. It’s easy. We do it all the time for our own vessels.”
“But we signed a maritime convention restricting our access to the private registers except in life-or-death or national security cases,” Ramirez continued. “I can’t just tap into the satellite files because you and I suspect a certain boat of being on an illegal mission. We need more authority.”
“Look, Roberto,” Todd argued vehemently, “who do you think is going to give us permission? We don’t have the photographs. We only have your word for it. No. We must act on our own. If we’re wrong, then nobody ever has to know about it. If we’re right, we’ll nail that bastard, we’ll both be heroes, and nobody will give us a hard time about what we’ve done.”
Ramirez was silent for a few seconds. “Don’t you at least think we should inform Commander Winters? He is, after all, the officer in charge of this Panther investigation.”
“Absolutely not,” said Lieutenant Todd quickly. “You heard him at the meeting yesterday. He thinks we’re out of line already. He’d like nothing better than to shit all over us. He’s jealous.” Todd saw that Ramirez was still undecided. “I’ll tell you what,” he said, “we’ll call him after we find out where the vessel is.”
Lieutenant Ramirez shook his head. “That won’t make any difference. We still will have exceeded our authority.”
“Shit,” said Todd in exasperation. “Tell me what has to be done and I’ll do it. Without you. I’ll take all the risk.” He stopped and looked directly at Ramirez. “I can’t fucking understand it. I guess you Mexicans really are gutless. You’re the one who actually saw the missile in the photograph, but . . .”
Ramirez’s eyes narrowed. His voice became hard. “That’s enough, Todd. We’ll get the data. But if this turns out to be a disaster, I will personally break your neck with my own hands.”
“I knew you’d see it my way,” Lieutenant Todd replied, smiling as he followed Ramirez to a command console.
Commander Winters put the extra six-pack of Coke on the top of the ice and then closed the cooler. “Anything else,” he shouted out the door at his wife and son, “before I haul this thing out to the car?”
“No, sir,” was the reply from the driveway. The commander picked up the cooler and carried it through the screen door. “Whew,” he said, as he loaded it in the open trunk of the car, “you have enough food and drink in here for a dozen people.”
“I wish you were coming, sir,” said Hap. “Most of the rest of the fathers will be there.”
“I know. I know,” answered Winters. “But your mother’s going. And I need to do some private rehearsing for tonight.” He gave his son a brief hug. “Besides, Hap, we’ve talked about this before. Lately I haven’t felt comfortable at organized church activities. I believe that religion is between God and the individual.”
“You haven’t always felt that way,” Betty interjected from the other side of the car. “In fact, you used to love church picnics. You’d play softball and swim and we would
laugh all evening.” There was just a trace of bitterness in her voice. “Come on, Hap.” she said after a momentary pause “We don’t want to be late. Thank your father for helping us pack.”
“Thanks, Dad.” Hap climbed into the car and Winters closed the door behind him. They waved to each other as the Pontiac backed out of the driveway into the street. As they drove away, Winters mused to himself, I must spend more time with him. He needs me now. If I don’t it will soon be too late.
He turned around and walked back into the house. At the refrigerator he stopped and opened the door. He poured himself a glass of orange juice. While he was drinking it, he looked idly around the kitchen. Already Betty had cleaned up the breakfast dishes and put them in the dishwasher. The counters were scrubbed. The morning paper was neatly folded on the breakfast table. The kitchen was tidy, orderly. Like his wife. She abhorred messes of all kinds. Winters remembered one morning, back when Hap was still in diapers and they were living in Norfolk Virginia. The little boy had been exuberantly pounding the kitchen table and suddenly his arms had flailed out, knocking Betty’s cup of coffee and the creamer onto the floor. They both broke and made quite a mess all over the kitchen. Betty had stopped her meal abruptly. By the time she had returned to her cold scrambled eggs, there was not the slightest indication anywhere, not on the floors, the lower cupboard, or even in the wastebasket (she packed all the broken pieces neatly in the basket liner and then removed the entire bag to the outside cans), that there had been an accident.
Just to the right of the refrigerator in the Winterses’ kitchen, hanging on the wall, there was a small plaque with simple lettering. “For God so loved the world,” it said, “that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever shall believe in Him shall have everlasting life . . . John 3:16.” Vernon Winters saw this kitchen plaque every day, but he had not actually read the words for months, maybe even years. On this particular Saturday morning he read them and was moved. He thought about Betty’s God, a God very similar to the one he had worshipped in his childhood and adolescence in Indiana, a quiet, calm, wise old man who sat up in heaven somewhere, watching everything, knowing everything, waiting to receive and answer our prayers. It was such a simple, beautiful image. “Our Father, Who art in Heaven,” he said, recalling the hundreds maybe thousands of times that he had prayed in church, “Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done. On Earth as it is in Heaven . . .”
And what is Thy will for me, old man, Winters thought, a little taken aback by his own irreverence. For eight years You have let me drift. Ignored me. Tested me like Job. Or maybe punished me. He walked over to the kitchen table and sat down. He took another sip from his orange juice. But have I been forgiven? I don’t yet know. Never once in all that time have You given me a definite sign. Despite my prayers and my tears. One time, he thought, right after Libya, I wondered if maybe . . .
He remembered being half asleep on the beach, lying on his back with his eyes closed on a big comfortable towel. In the distance he could hear the surf and children’s voices, occasionally he could even distinguish Hap’s voice or Betty’s. The summer sun was warm, relaxing. A light began to dart about on the inside of his eyelids. Winters opened his eyes. He couldn’t see much because the sunlight was too bright and there was also a glare, a metal glint of some kind, in his eyes. He shaded his forehead with his hand. A little girl with long hair, a year old perhaps, was standing just above him, staring at him. The glint was coming from the long metal comb in her hair.
Winters closed his eyes and opened them again. Now he could see her better. She had shifted her head just a little so the glare was gone. But she was still staring fixedly at him, with absolutely no expression on her face. She was wearing only diapers. He could tell that she was foreign. Arab perhaps, he had thought at the time, looking back into her deep brown, almond-shaped eyes. She didn’t move or say anything. She just watched him, curious, relentless, without seeming to notice anything that he did.
“Hello,” Winters said quietly. “Who are you?”
The little Arab girl gave no sign that she had heard anything. After a few seconds, however, she suddenly pointed her finger at him and her face looked angry. Winters shuddered and sat up abruptly. His quick action frightened her and she began to cry He reached for her but she pulled away, slipped, lost her balance, and fell on the sand. Her head hit something sharp when she fell and blood started running down her scalp and onto her shoulder. Terrified, first by the fall and then by the sight of her own blood, the little girl began to wail.
Winters hovered over her, struggling with his own panic as he watched the blood splatter the sand. Something unrecognized flashed through his mind and he decided to pick the little Arab girl up to comfort her. She fought him violently, with the reckless abandon and surprising strength of the toddler, and struggled free. She fell again on the sand, on her side, the blood from her scalp injury scattering drops of red around the light brown sand. She was now completely hysterical, crying so hard she often could not catch her breath, her face suffused with fear and anger. She pointed again at Winters.
Within seconds a pair of dark brown arms swooped out of the sky and picked her up. For the first time Winters noticed that there were other people around, lots of them in fact. The little girl had been picked up by a man who must have been her father, a short, squat Arab man in his mid-twenties wearing a bright blue bathing suit. He was holding his daughter protectively, looking as if he were expecting a fight, and consoling his distraught young wife whose sobs intermingled with the little girl’s frantic cries. Both the parents were looking at Winters accusingly. The mother daubed at the little girl’s bleeding head with a towel.
“I didn’t mean to hurt her,” Winters said, recognizing as he spoke that what he said would be misinterpreted. “She fell and hit her head on something and I . . .” The Arab couple were backing away slowly. Winters turned to the others, maybe a dozen people who had come over in response to the little girl’s cries. They also were looking at him strangely. “I didn’t mean to hurt her,” he repeated in a loud voice. “I was just . . .” He stopped himself. Big tears were falling off his face and onto the sand. My God, he thought, I’m crying. No wonder these people . . .
He heard another cry. Betty and Hap had apparently just walked up behind him as the Arab couple had backed away with their bleeding daughter. Now, having seen the blood on his father’s hands, five-year-old Hap had broken into tears and buried his face in his mother’s hip. He sobbed and sobbed. Winters looked at his hands, then at the people standing around him. Impulsively he bent down and tried to clean his hands in the sand. The sound of his son’s sobbing punctuated his vain attempt to wipe his hands free of the blood.
As he was kneeling in the sand, Commander Winters glanced at his wife Betty for the first time since the incident had started. What he saw on her face was abject horror. He entreated her for support with his eyes, but instead her eyes glazed over and she too fell to her knees, careful not to disturb her tearful son who was clinging to her side. And Betty began to pray. “Dear God,” she said with her eyes closed.
The crowd dispersed slowly, several of them going over to the Arab family to see if they could be of any help. Winters stayed on his knees in the sand, shaken by his own actions.
At length Betty stood up. “There, there,” she consoled her son Hap, “everything will be all right.” Without saying another word, she carefully picked up the beach bag and towels and started walking toward the parking lot. The commander followed.
They left the beach and drove back to Norfolk where they were living. And she never asked about it, Winters thought, as he sat at his kitchen table eight years later. She wouldn’t even let me talk about it. For at least three years. It was as if it had never happened. Now she mentions it once in a blue moon. But we still have never discussed it.
He finished his orange juice and lit a cigarette. As he did so, he thought immediately of Tiffani and the night before. Fear and arousal simultaneousl
y stirred in Winters when he thought of the coming evening. He also found that he had a curious desire to pray. And now dear God, he said tentatively, are You testing me again? He was suddenly aware of his own anger. Or are You laughing at me? Maybe it wasn’t enough for You to forsake me, to leave me adrift. Maybe You won’t he satisfied until I am humiliated.
Again he felt like crying. But he resisted. Winters crushed out his cigarette and stood up from the table. He walked over to the side of the refrigerator and pulled the plaque containing the Bible verse off the wall. He started to throw it in the trash but, after hesitating for a second, he changed his mind and put it in one of the kitchen drawers.
4
CAROL was swimming rapidly about six feet above the trench as they approached the final turn. She took a few photographs while she waited for Troy to catch up, pointed down below her to where the tracks turned to the left, and then started swimming again, more slowly this time, following the tracks in the narrow crevice toward the overhang. Nothing here had changed. She motioned for Troy to stay back and swam down into the trench, carefully, as she had done before when she was with Nick. Her search of the area under the overhang was very thorough. She did not find anything.
She gestured to Troy that nothing was there, and then, after another quick sequence of photographs, the two divers began retracing their path, going back along the tracks toward the area under the boat where they had already spent fifteen minutes earlier searching fruitlessly for the fissure they had seen on Thursday. It had mysteriously vanished. All the tracks, although somewhat eroded, still converged in front of the reef structure where the hole had been just two days before. Carol had poked and prodded, even damaged the reef in several places (which, as an environmentalist, she hated to do, but she was certain the hole had to be there), but had not found the fissure. If Troy had not seen it so clearly, first on the ocean telescope monitor and then in the pictures, he would have thought that it was just a figment of Nick and Carol’s collective imagination.